Logs:Of Dates and Daleks (Or, Night at the Museum)

Of Dates and Daleks (Or, Night at the Museum)
Dramatis Personae Kavalam, Kelawini, Sriyani
In Absentia Nevaeh	2023-03-13 << EXTERMINATE >>
Location <XS> Kelawini and Nessie's Dorm / Boston Children's Museum
This is a double-occupancy room, quite generously sized by dorm hall standards. Two sets of furniture, sturdy and pleasant if basic, take up one half of the room each. It's almost dinnertime, and Kelawini has been ensconced in here since classes let out. She's emptied half her wardrobe onto her bed, the selection sending confused signals as to her aim: a frumpy hand-me-down blouse, cargo pants, probably every skirt she owns, and a rash guard. What she's finally settled on--or, at least, what she's currently wearing--is a bright yellow dress with a shirred bodice, off-the-shoulder sleeves likely meant to be much looser than they are on her, and layered skirts that swishes nicely around her black knee-high boots. She's added a black sash belt to give her waist more definition and a black velvet burnout shawl (also a hand-me-down) dotted with rhinestone stars; the black jacket draped over the back of her chair doesn't really tie the outfit together, but at least it doesn't clash. Presently she's at her desk removing makeup rather than putting it on, and to judge by the heap of colorful cotton rounds in the trash can it's not the first time she's started over tonight. The door opens -- not the door to the hallway, but Nessie's closet door. There's a brief giggle from behind the door before a small dark-skinned wide-eyed face peeks out, silver and green yarn twists framing her face and an unevenly stitched silver-and-green cape tied around her neck. "Oh! Oh you are here, that's good." Nevaeh is peering around the room curiously before whispering back over her shoulder: "See she is here, I knew it --" Though she doesn't sound incredibly confident when she creeps further into the room. "Are you alone?" There's no time to answer this before, "Are you busy? Do you want to do an adventure?" Kelawini frowns when she hears the noise and turns slowly, horror-movie style, to the closet door. She seems just about ready to shriek and possibly throw the makeup remover at the intruder, but comes up short when said intruder turns out to be a small girl. "How you get dere!" This doesn't actually sound like a question; perhaps she's been at Mutant High too long to wonder such things in earnest. "Chee, you one--one--" She waves at the girl's general head and neck region as she gets up for a better look past Nevaeh. "--da kine. Uh yeah I wanna do an adventure, I no--" Her phone cuts her off with SpongeBob's iconic nose flute tune, its screen where it lies face-up on her desk reminding her to "MEET KAVALAM 4 GRINDS DUMMEH!!!" "Oh, Sriyani brought me, they make magic doors it's so cool," Nevaeh confides. Her brow crinkles after this, head tilting quizzically to the side. "The kind of what?" But she's smiling bright at Kelawini's ACCEPTANCE of the MISSION, waving the older girl back towards the door. "Great! You're the technology wizard, right?" She's gnawing on her lip a little anxiously with this question, still looking around like maybe she half expects to see someone else there. "Da kine like...superkids. Wait wait wait!" Kelawini steps back over to her desk and picks up her phone, which is still piping and buzzing. "I gotta...date?" She looks like she's still very much chewing this information over when she looks back at Nevaeh and promptly forgets it. "Shoots, I am da tech wiz!" On her phone's next chime she looks down at it again. "Oh! Right, no I gotta date I wen forget already..." The phone stops buzzing as she tucks it into her purse and she frowns at the makeup spread across her desk. "Huh. 'Kayden, you need some wizarding?" She shoulders the purse and goes to Nevaeh. "I got to get up close, though." On the other side of the door is a small alley, a rat just skittering behind a dumpster as Nevaeh leads Kelawini through. Sriyani is in the alley, pacing restlessly as they shoot off some rapid texts on their phone. They look up with a smile, a bright wave, as the others return. "Hi oh wow okay good you were free Nevaeh wasn't sure this time but -- this isn't like an emergency it's just weird and we thought we should -- well you'll see." They're already crossing to the other side of the alley, opening a dingy back door just opposite the one they came out of -- whatever is behind the door is currently dark and -- distantly -- emitting intermittent thunks and squeaks. The door behind them catches -- just for a moment -- sticking briefly apparently on nothing, before swinging closed on what was just Kelawini's dorm. Kelawini gets about three steps down the alley before she starts shivering. "Huuuu it's cold! I should have..." She looks down at her dress and frowns. "Worn more clothes?" She's forging gamely on toward the other door anyway. Her eye grow wider when she hears the noises and she hesitates at the threshold. She glances from Nevaeh to Sriyani, then back, and continues on through the door with probably more force than necessary. The other side of the door is, thankfully, climate controlled. They're let out into a cavernous space, a balcony walk rung around an absolutely enormous structure of climbing net and tubes and ladders and slides and wavy platforms that goes up several stories. It's mostly in the dark, just the glow of the exit signs lighting the huge center space. In the room adjacent to them there's a cheerful sign -- REAL LIFE ROBOTS! -- overhead, the room filled with museum exhibits discussing the history and present of robotics, robots kids might find around their very own homes, the leaps forward in robotics in recent years. One of the displays quite clearly is meant to have a number of robots on display, but those robots are currently not on their perches. A small horde of them -- small spindly-legged dog-like creatures -- have hopped down off their pedestals and are proceeding, with eyes aglow, towards Kelawini and the M-Kids. Nevaeh has ducked to hide behind Sriyani, pointing wordlessly to the bots. "They used to be good but now they're like the Decepticons," she confides to Kelawini. Kelawini gazes around her in wonder at the robotics exhibition, turning a full circle as she looks up at the platforms overhead. And then the dog-bots start converging on them. "The hell?" She sounds almost casual about this, considering that she follows it up with, "Eh, they got any ki--like uh. Lasers? Change into little cars?" She slides a step to the side, then another, trying to circle around to the side of the little robotic pack and get close enough to touch. "Do they have lasers?" Nevaeh is scooting back towards the huge climbing structure behind them. "They've attacked like -- three kids already this week," Sryiani's hushed and breathless tone might be concerned about this or might be excited, it's hard to tell. "And I think they're racist." The horde of small robots are charging directly at Kelawini. At close range it is clear that their rudimentary AIs have been even more crudely tampered with -- the small-robot-dog equivalent of << EXTERMINATE >> clanging in single focus across all their minds. They, thankfully, seem to have no equipped lasers with which to do so -- not really designed for killing at all, their murderous urges kind of just resolve into crashing up against Kelawini's legs. It still might be painful -- more like bumping a shin than getting lasered, though. "No lasers," Kelawini announces, though perhaps by this point the M-Kids probably don't need a technopath to tell them so. "These aren't smart enough to be racist but they for sure been messed with..." She grimaces under the robots' admittedly not very injurious assault, visibly struggling to focus as she gropes around in their unfamiliar operating systems for the source of the hack. "Like. They been programmed to exterminate--little fakkas cut it out!--which is mostly just kind of distracting..." She starts looking for their motor controls, too. Under the hood, the robots are in fact not smart enough to be racist -- intentionally, but some further poking around might soon reveal the source of their inadvertent biases. Someone within the past few days has reprogrammed them in a very clumsy attempt to mimic the Sentinels' mutant-identification algorithms -- likely without even knowing how the Sentinels themselves make their Mutant/Nonmutant decisions. The result has been the small robots gamely attempting to identify mutants based on any deviation from their training set of pictures and videos of young white children -- skin too dark? Hair too poofy? Travelling on wheels instead of on foot? Clear aberrations from Standard Human Traits! Time To Kill. The little robots are still attempting their ineffectual mutant-cide -- occasionally knocking each other over in their single-minded attempt to Kill The Nearest Mutant. Meanwhile, somewhere down the walkway behind them, the robots' commotion has attracted some attention. The bob of a flashlight, making its way down an adjoining corridor and soon to spill out onto the wide-open view of the balconied area. Kelawini's eyes go very wide. She starts to back again from the dog-bots. Then stops; they immediately catch up to her. "They supposed to be looking for mutants. Like--like--" She swallows, kicking one of the bots aside. "You know. 'Cept they got no weapons and also they suck at everything, just go after anyone don't look 'normal'." She's copying the malicious code to a partition of her phone's drive and scrubbing it from the bots. "If I find whoever done this they gonna catch some cracks. You guys do any super...detectiv--" She cuts off, looking toward the impending security guard. "We gotta go," she hisses at the M-Kids as she hastens toward the way they'd entered. With the malicious code removed, the dog-bots are now -- just a little confused. Aimlessly bumbling through the display. Bumping into each other. Toddling down the hall. "We're branching out into detectiving -- I mean I think you're being a big help at that right now! Oh, wow, do you think they'll miss it if we take one of these to study -- oh no oh no Nevaeh, c'mon," Sriyani is hissing urgently as they scramble toward the door. Nevaeh has backed herself all the way into the climbing structure, perching on the lip of one of its wavy platforms. As Sriyani calls to her she hops back down -- right into the beam of the security guard's flashlight as the man rounds the corner, peering straight towards the M/X-Kids. "Well, shit, what are you all doing out there?" sounds oddly less alarmed than he probably ought to be at the sight of three teenagers breaking into the museum at night. He seems unhurried as he ambles closer -- and right past them, not even looking at the children and instead scooping up two of the wandering dogbots to cart them back into their display. "... what the." Sriyani has stopped with a hand on the doorknob, just gawking at the guard. "Woah can you computer-wizard at humans too?" Nevaeh sounds Extremely Impressed. "Brains are like computers, right?" "There are far more competent robots they could be using. What is this museum teaching children? Code incompetently?" Kavalam, in his typical way, isn't suddenly leaning up against the balcony's safety-glass barrier so much as he has always been leaning up against it, how could they have missed him there? He's even quite brightly dressed, in a fine three-button purple suit that hangs loose on his lanky frame, a black dress shirt cinched with a lavender tie, and black and white saddle shoes, giving the overall impression of a very young groomsman or a very old flower child. He's currently holding one of the dogbots up for a close inspection, as if he might also be able to glean some insight from watching its legs flail uselessly in the air. "... I suppose that also, trying to murder all mutants is a little bad too." When the guard's flashlight catches Navaeh, Kelawini scoops up one of the dog-bots as if she means to chuck it--as a distraction? As a weapon? Fortunately she never gets farther than just holding onto it, slowing to a stop as she notices Kavalam. "Oh, you're here!" She hastes to his side, utterly blase about crossing the guard's field of vision "No worry, M-Kids, the rent-a-cop can't see us. This badass here is--oh no!" She winces. "We're supposed to be on a date!" Sriyani whirls around when Kavalam speaks, but then just stares for a moment in some confusion. "Wait, you're -- he's -- did we..." Their brow scrunches, gaze fixed in perplexed-math-lady style on Kavalam. "Wo-o-oah." Nevaeh is looking between the guard and Kavalam -- the guard and Kavalam -- and seems to draw her conclusions considerably quicker than her companion. "I did not see you on this mission." Then, after a second, uncertain: "Did I?" She's plowing ahead, bright: "You can have a date mission my brother has totally had date missions before. And," this is earnest, "I think you both look very nice." The guard is returning -- completely ignoring the children once more as well as the bot Kavalam is holding. He gathers up the rest of the bots, chiding them gently as he carts them back inside: "-- Nobody ever teach you stay? My pup learned that one early. No treats for you tonight, I guess --" Sriyani is watching all this with a growing amusement. "That is so cool do you have any idea how many missions I've wished we could -- ohno we interrupted a date? Do you want me to take you somewhere, um, date... y... we could drop you somewhere. Datey." "Yes, very cool. Comes in very handy for museum -- heists." Kavalam's own smile is smaller -- a little more wistful, a lot less amused. "We are getting closer, at least." He pulls, unhurried, away from the balcony rail, setting the scuttled dog-bot down beside Kelawini as he approaches the door. "Next time, I'm sure. Next time we will get there for real, no?"